Heartland Conference Celebrates Science for Sale

Heartland Conference Celebrates Science for Sale

The Heartland Institute is rounding up the usual suspects for a conference that will alert international media to “the fact” that a shocking number of “scientists” can be induced with a little cash and a free trip to New York City to question the science of global warming.

As reported by RealClimate.org, this is not a “scientific conference” in the normal sense:

“Normal scientific conferences have the goal of discussing ideas and data in order to advance scientific understanding. Not this one. The organisers are surprisingly open about this in their invitation letter to prospective speakers, which states:

'The purpose of the conference is to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science, and that expensive campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not necessary or cost-effective.'

So this conference is not aimed at understanding, it is a PR event aimed at generating media reports.”

Heartland has taken over the from thoroughly discredited Competitive Enterprise Institute as the leading propaganda mill sowing confusion about climate science, although CEI is one of the sponsors of this event. We at the DeSmogBlog will try to keep track over the coming weeks to see if any new faces show up among the scientists for hire. Our dream gift for 2008, however, would be a list of the politicians and “journalists” who accept Heartland's offer of an all-expenses paid trip for the New York gabfest.

I have trouble seeing how this transparently unobjective approach will help their cause. But I guess that depends on what the media (and participating politicians) do with it. As it stands now, it seems that all they have are insults, conflations and obfuscations, appeals to emotion, and a few reworded but long-ago debunked talking points. No credibility. Maybe they figure they’ve got nothing to lose.

My favorite expert is S. Fred Singer, listed as a Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University. If he’s so distinguished why isn’t he listed on the school’s web site and why would an operator tell me that there’s “no such person by that name” at George Mason? The last time he did research was as a grad student in the 1940s, in electrical engineering… and the only professing he ever did was along side Pat Michaels at Virginia - undergraduate environmental studies about 20 years ago. If there were a law against impersonating a atmospheric researcher, this joker would have been locked up a long time ago.

Hi ‘J’ surely when it comes to criticism of poeples backgrounds you must be well aware the pro-warmers have some major umm flaws? If it’s open season on ‘deniers’ lets take a look at the losers on the pro-AGW team;

“A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect”
Richard Benedict, US Conservation Foundation

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing”
Tim Wirth, former US Senator

“The trouble with this idea is that planting trees will not lead to the societal changes we want to achieve”
Kyoto Delegate, 05 December 1997

“The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans.”
Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong, Head of 1992 Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro

In the early 1970s Dr Stephen Schneider rejected man-made global warming theory, writing, “temperatures do not increase in proportion to an atmospheric increase in carbon dioxide.” He went as far as to predict that another little ice age would occur soon, but it hasn’t. Schneider now endorses man-made global warming theory and man made CO2.

Zog, you make my day: “avaricious charlatans,” “smarmy hypocrites” - your world may be imaginary, but it’s clearly filled with rich imagery.

And yes, absolutely, Jim Hoggan and John Lefebvre pay me (and thanks again for that, you guys). The question is, who’s footing the bill for the “scholarships” now available to any scientist willing to prostitute his position at the coming New York conference - or any pliant politician willing to come and scribble down scientifically insensible talking points?

These AGW-denier guys seem more than a little dense. I mean, how can they not see the difference between a PR person (who discloses his funding) from someone else who pretends he is a researcher (but doesn’t disclose his funding or says he doesn’t know who pays him)? Makes me suspect that their comments here are not honest. On the other hand, refusal to accept the fact that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations likely enhances the greenhouse effect might be symptomatic of a limited intellectual capacity. Or wait … could that be dishonest, too? Like posting comments under multiple pseudonyms, maybe?

You have to boil it right down to some pretty basic, empirically understood facts about the behaviour of the elements, and they STILL don’t get it! If they can’t follow grade 11 chemistry, it should come as no surprise that they continue to talk about “Al Gore’s science” as though he (a lay-person & spokesman) came up with AGW all by himself, and fail to recognize Fred Singer, Tim Ball et al as scientific has-beens (or never-were’s) and mercenaries.

Seriously, there are a great many people who really couldn’t follow chemistry, grade 11 or otherwise, and don’t trust science because they don’t understand how rigorously “the method” is applied. They really don’t understand why the opinions of people like Singer & Ball shouldn’t carry as much weight as those of Hansen, Weaver, Mann and so on. Getting through to them is a huge challenge. They aren’t stupid, just naive – which makes them sitting ducks for the Singer & Ball Snakeoil salesmen.
Fern Mackenzie

So 2,500 researchers and scientists at the IPCC think AGW is happening and 19,000 scientists sign a petition against AGW because they think it isn’t happening and we’re being led up the garden path. I make that nearly 8 to 1 against global warming.

Even the Senate Committee stated there’s no ‘consensus’ and ‘the debate isn’t over’ and how can the IPCC and Gore claim it to be so when they have 4 times more scientists against global warming theory?

So the global warming ‘theorists’ think we’re stupid and too thick to take in basic chemistry? Nobody here is exactly blinding me with science. In fact the AGW people seem to be full of half-truths, propoganda, spin and swallowing any old computer model and are pretty dim to do so.

Richard Littlemore, maybe journalism should have the same standards as science because your snide little article hasn’t advanced knowledge one iota. Gutter journalism more like. Talking about the ‘imaginary’ isn’t it about time you and the IPCC gave up on the computer models that fill our heads with stupid scare stories?

I say that because to generate a full model of the climate system covering all spatial scales, and then use it to run a 50 year projection into the future, would take more than 10 to the power of 34 years of supercomputer time, according to Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. This timescale is 10 to the power 24 times longer than the current age of the universe, which itself is about 10 billion years.

If you haven’t got 10 billion years maybe you should spend an hour reading the Heartland Institutes climate document which has incidentally more solid science and less stupid IPCC computer game scares in it. Here, read it, your next article may actually contain something useful for once! http://heartland.temp.siteexecutive.com/pdf/22835.pdf

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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With the news of Willie Soon's fossil-fuel-funded career featured on the front page of The New York Times on Sunday, there's no time like the present to take a look at all of Soon's friends in the anti-science climate denial echo chamber.